Hello and welcome to Simplified on PowerDrift, a segment where we take complicated ideas
and break them down into something simple so we can use it and we can understand it.
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And today we're going to talk about brake fluids.
The reason why we're talking about brake fluids is for two reasons, one, brake fluid degrades
faster than you think and that's why your brakes don't feel great after a while.
And second, there is a easy upgrade and cheap upgrade to be had in terms of what your brakes
are able to do for you if you were to just pay attention.
Now, on most vehicles today which have disc brakes, you have a hydraulic circuit, then
that means the master cylinder generates the pressure, it transmits this pressure through
a tube down to the callipers, where the pistons press against the brake pads, the brake pads
then in turn press against the disc and the friction loses kinetic energy, creates heat
and that's how your vehicle slows down.
Now most vehicles as standard get DOT 4 brake fluid and I'm not going to go into the chemical
composition of the brake fluid because that's not really important, what is important is
what it does.
Now brake fluids have two properties that we need to pay attention to, the first is,
DOT 4 brake fluids, for example, love water, and as they're exposed to water, for example,
by a leak in the tubing somewhere where it's able to take on even atmospheric water like,
water vapour, the ability of this brake fluid to do its job starts to go away, the other
property that we need to be aware of is that it has a boiling point and once the brake
fluid reaches boiling point, and the fluid inside starts to boil, its ability to maintain
reliable steady pressures goes away and that's what we call us brake fade, which means you're
riding along, you're riding quite hard and as you use your brakes again and again, you'll
start finding that the lever actually comes back closer and closer to the bar, which means
you have to use more of the lever, push the piston inside the master cylinder, bigger
distances to generate the same pressure that you were able to do before,
that's called brake fade.
Now when most people suffer issues with their brakes, they're immediately starting
to think about things like, I need to get my callipers cleaned, which might be a genuine
problem, they think about getting better pad materials and that might be one way to approach
a solution or they might think about replacing the master cylinder with something with a
smaller piston so that the multiplication factor in the hydraulic system is bigger and
therefore you can generate more force with the same lever effort.
But what's usually wrong with the motorcycle or the car at that point is simply that their
brake fluid is just old and that means it had time to take on water, it's boiled a few
times, there are impurities in the mix now, and therefore it's just not able to do its job.
So for most people who ride seriously and drive seriously, we recommend that you should
be changing your brake fluids once every year, that's how you keep the brake fluid topped
up, you know that the levels are good, and the fluid is good, which means it will do
its job well.
There's also something called DOT 5 brake fluids, which is a completely different chemical
compositions and for the purposes of this video, we're going to completely ignore DOT 5,
because systems that run DOT 4 can't run DOT 5, because DOT 5 is more corrosive, and
it'll eat some of the seals and rubber in there and will cause a overall degradation
of the braking system.
So whatever you do, if you've got a vehicle with DOT 4 brake fluid in it, don't put DOT 5.
What you should think about is putting something called DOT 5.1, which I'm going to call 5.1
for the rest of this video.
The big change from 4 to 5.1 is simply a much bigger increase in the boiling point, which
means you can use the brake more, allow more heat to build up in the system and the fluid
still doesn't boil, which means the brake performance stays more consistent.
The fun part is that if you were to go on Amazon today and look for big brands like
Brembo, or Liqui Moly or any of these guys, you will find that 5.1 brake fluid bottles
actually don't cost much, they're about 500 to 600 bucks at the very maximum.
And the brake force increase that you can get from this, the reliability of the system
that increases with a small change like this, is so massive, it beggars belief for me that
most people won't just take their DOT 4, throw it out of the window almost when the vehicle
is new, and straightaway go to 5.1, it's that much of an upgrade.
The one option to that which is still marked as DOT 4 is URBF which is made by Putoline,
they call it the ultimate racing brake fluid, which also has a much higher boiling point,
although it's officially classified as a DOT 4 fluid.
So in short, if you're having trouble with your brakes, instead of going for the expensive
components first, which is things like replacing the master cylinder, getting braided lines,
changing the pad materials, getting the callipers cleaned and all of that, and all of these
are good solutions, I would say look at the fluid first, if the fluid levels are low or
the fluid is old, chances are the problem has come from there and not from the rest
of the hardware in the system.
And if you are going to replace brake fluid and you should do it once a year, like I said,
think about getting 5.1, it's not an expensive upgrade, but it is a massive, massive upgrade
and I promise you will be super happy with it.
So happy that all the motorcycles I own have always run on 5.1 as soon as I've been able
to change it, and every year they get fresh 5.1 and some of the best brakes I've ever
experienced are on my motorcycles and it's just the fluid and it has nothing to do with
the hardware componentry that's in play.
Thank you so much for watching.
This is Simplified on PowerDrift where we take complicated ideas and break this down.
If you have other ideas that can improve the braking experience with your vehicle,
do leave us a comment.
If there are other topics that Simplified should be attacking, do leave us a comment as well.
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